Page:The History of Trade Unionism - Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1920).djvu/27

Rh wainers, in rebellion against the "overseers of the trade," are reported to be aiming at making a permanent fraternity. Nine years later the serving-men of the saddlers, "called yeomen," assert that they have had a fraternity of their own, "time out of mind," with a livery and appointed governors. The masters declared, however, that the association was only thirteen years old, and that its object was to raise wages. In 1417 the tailors' "serving men and journeymen" in London have to be forbidden to dwell apart from their masters as they hold assemblies and have formed a kind of association. Nor were these fraternities confined to London. In 1538 the Bishop of Ely reports to Cromwell that twenty-one journeymen shoemakers of Wisbech have assembled on a hill without the town, and sent three of their number to summon all the master shoemakers to meet them, in order to insist upon an advance in their wages, threatening that "there shall none come into the town to serve for that wages within a twelve month and a day, but we woll have an harme or a legge of hym, except they woll take an othe as we have doon."

These instances derived from the very fragmentary materials as yet printed, suggest that a more complete examination of the unpublished archives might possibly disclose a whole series of journeymen fraternities, and enable us to determine the exact constitution of these associations. It is, for instance, by no means clear whether the instances cited were strikes against employers, or revolts against the authority of the gild. Our impression is that the case of the Wisbech shoemakers, and possibly some of